Beneath the Shadow of the Future
by Dante de Troy
Summary: Two Titans reflect on recent events. Set following Titans' recent trip to the future


Beneath the Shadow of the Future

By

Dante

(Author's disclaimer: I have been a bit lax in my Titans reading of late, so some of this may have already been covered, but I thought that this was an intriguing thing to explore, so please just take it for what it is.)

(Note: This vignette is set immediately following the Titans' return from the dark future timeline they recently visited.)

Titans Tower

The night was cold, the air crisp and clean with the scent of sea salt that carried just the tiniest tang of the city's pollution behind it. For now, the stars shone clear and bright on the glimmering glass of Titans Tower. Conner Kent stood alone on the roof of the tower, statuesque as he stared out over the bay, storm clouds in the distance. It had been several days since the team had made their way back from the horrible future they'd found themselves in. A future where he was Superman. Thoughts whirled around in his head. It seemed that they never stopped now, plagued as he was by what he had seen. It was as if his greatest dreams and his worst fears had both come true in some nightmarish vision that now tortured him, both asleep and awake.

I've always wanted to be Superman, he thought. He'd tried, of course, when he'd first escaped from Cadmus, but it had been harder to fill Big Blue's shoes than he'd thought. He'd been through a lot since then, grown a lot, changed a lot. He'd seen his namesake rise from the dead, and cheated death himself more than once. He'd seen Clark's true heroism when he'd lost his powers and still tried to save lives. He'd faced death head on, with Tana's demise. In all that, one thing had never changed. He still hoped that some day he would be chosen to take over the mantle of Superman. I wanted to become the kind of man he is, Conner thought. Someone he'd be proud of, proud to hand his name over to. But that wasn't it.

The man he had seen, himself, had been cold, harsh, and cruel. He'd seen his future self ruthlessly roast an arm off Slade Wilson while the rest of the team looked on in what had almost seemed to be satisfaction. It wasn't the looks of his teammates' future selves that disturbed him the most, though. It was the look on his own face, the face that he saw in the mirror every day. He was having fun.

"Feeling thoughtful?"

Conner turned around and saw Tim coming toward him from the stairwell. If anyone else was as disturbed over the recent events they'd been through, it had to be Tim. In the future they'd seen, Tim was Batman, but a Batman who was just as ruthless as the Superman that Conner had become. He'd actually held the young Tim at gunpoint with the very same gun that had been used to kill Bruce Wayne's parents.

"I guess I've got a lot to think about, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

"Our little trip shake you up too?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that."

They both sat quietly for a moment, each wordlessly acknowledging what the other thought and felt. What they had seen was enough to disturb even the strongest and most stable personalities. That was not too say that either Tim or Conner was emotionally unstable. But between Tim's recent tragic losses and the terrifying revelation that Conner was half-cloned from Lex Luthor, neither had been emotionally prepared to deal with the future that had been presented to them as all too terrifyingly possible.

"How could it have happened, Tim? What could have made us become those people?"

"I don't know, Conner. We've both seen some pretty horrible things, you know that as well as I do."

"I know that, but… how?"

Tim was silent for a moment. Despite what Conner felt was one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, it seemed, Tim was more than scared, he was concerned. He was concerned because he had seen more of himself in the future Batman than perhaps any of the other Titans had seen in their future selves. The horrible rage, the calculating cruelty that he'd seen in the eyes of… his eyes… were demons he could feel maturing in himself every day. When he looked at what he'd become, it was shocking to think how he'd started. When it began, he'd been a fan, nothing more. He had such a love of Batman and Robin, the wondrous things that they did in the television footage… he'd known them so well that he'd been able to pick it out when Robin had executed an acrobatic maneuver he'd seen years before at the circus and that moment changed his life. What had he been thinking, all those years ago, charging into Wayne Manor to tell Bruce that he knew and that he thought he knew what was best. Even then, he seemed to think that he could do Batman's job better than Batman. Well, he'd seen now what he'd do with the chance. He became a killer, a ruthless killer bent on destroying crime at the cost of becoming a criminal himself. But that didn't answer the question.

"How, Tim?"

"Something horrible, Conner. It had to have taken something horrible to turn us into what we saw."

"I don't know what could possibly do that."

"Me either."

"But we can change it, right?"

"I wish I knew. We've seen before that time is fluid, but we don't know what led to that future, so I… just don't know."

It was an answer, but a very unsettling one.


End file.
